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Mental Health America Blog
Mental Health America Blog - Chiming In
By Paul Gionfriddo
There are half a million homeless people with serious mental illnesses in desperate need of help yet underserved or ignored by our health and social-service systems. That number can seem overwhelming, but for me, it’s all about one person: my son Tim.
Tomorrow is Tim’s 30th birthday, and I wish I could spend it with him. But I don’t know where he is, so this year I’ll have to settle for the memories of his childhood birthdays. Tim was diagnosed with schizophrenia over two decades ago, and has been homeless on the streets of San Francisco...
By Andrea Blanch, Ph.D. and David Shern, Ph.D.
It is becoming increasingly clear that toxic stress and trauma play an important role in the development of mental health and addictive disorders. We have recently explored some of the implications of this emerging picture for improving individual...
By David Shern, Ph.D. and Andrea Blanch, Ph.D.
The outbreak of measles in Disneyland highlighted the importance of vaccinating children against contagious diseases. Vaccinations prevent children from getting ill and from spreading disease to others. The...
By Debbie Plotnick, MSS MLSP
Dear E. Fuller Torrey and Doris Fuller:
Early Saturday morning, I saw the op-ed that you both authored which ran in the Wall Street Journal.
It pretty much was all I could think of over the weekend. At first I was very, very angry. This was because it hurt me personally, as a family member, as a mental health advocate, and as a social worker.
The subtitle and implications about those who are “high functioning” ...
By Andrea Blanch, Ph.D. and David Shern, Ph.D.
As Thomas Insel, Director of the National Institute of Mental Health wrote in a recent blog, precision medicine is a hot new topic in the research world. The basic idea is simple: Get the “right treatment at the right time to the right person” by addressing the underlying cause of the disorder, not the symptoms. In practice, accomplishing this goal may be a bit more complicated.
Dr. Insel points out that in many areas...
By Paul Gionfriddo
The JAMA headline is pretty sensational: Improving Long-term Psychiatric Care: Bring Back the Asylum. And the article itself is generating a lot of discussion and debate.
But headlines can be misleading. As the authors write:
“A return to asylum-based long-term psychiatric care will not remedy the complex problems of the US mental health system, especially for patients with milder forms of mental illness who can thrive with high-quality...
By Patrick Hendry, Vice President of Consumer Advocacy, Mental Health America
Download the Paper (PDF)
For many years I have thought that it would be interesting to take an in-depth look at the intersection of compassion, safety, and rights and how they apply in mental health advocacy, practice, and law. They are certainly reoccurring themes in the advocacy work I have...
By Andrea Blanch, Ph.D. and David Shern, Ph.D.
On many measures, our society is now considerably less safe, healthy, and economically productive than other comparable countries. Toxic stress and trauma, especially when coupled with genetic vulnerability, are seriously eroding our public health, social stability, and world leadership.
In two recent papers, we argue that our well-being depends on the well-being of our neighbors as much as our health...
By Paul Gionfriddo, President/CEO, Mental Health America
The best news sometimes comes when we least expect it. And those of us who have been pushing for years for early identification and intervention in schools for kids with mental health concerns got some unexpectedly good news last month.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued a letter that reversed a long-standing “Free Care” rule.
Here’s how the...
By Paul Gionfriddo, Mental Health America President/CEO
I was sitting at home doing some writing two years ago when I turned on the noontime news. There was only a small news item at first – there had been a shooting at a Connecticut elementary school in Newtown, and there were at least a couple of confirmed casualties.
It hit home for me, because of my Connecticut roots, and I began to pay close attention. As the next few hours unfolded and the extent of the tragedy became known, I was shocked and horrified by what I learned.
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